Yorktown's 'Golden Girls' Receive Highest Scouting Award

Editor's Note: Thanks to Janice Dobson for sharing the news with Patch.

Four members of Yorktown Girl Scout Troop 2133 – Alyssa Barbuti, Elizabeth Brennan, Amy Dobson and Jessica Hanratty – recently received their Gold Award, the highest achievement in scouting.

Each of the girls chose a project that benefits the community and has a broader reach.

Alyssa Barbuti’s project involved introducing a foreign language to elementary school students. She created booklets, CDs, and word search puzzles with basic words and phrases (numbers, colors, days of 98 the week). Alyssa visited third grade classes at Mohansic School to work with the students and a booklet, CD and puzzle to each child to take home. Her materials were also distributed to teachers at Crompond School for future use. 

For her project, Elizabeth Brennan addressed the dangers of driving while distracted, with a focus on texting while driving. Accidents can be prevented by avoiding things like eating, drinking, channel changing, phone use, and texting while driving, according to her. She talks, displayed posters, and distributed flyers and pamphlets. Elizabeth also found online pledges and free phone apps for parents and teens to help prevent texting while driving. Her "Don’t Text While Driving!" project was sponsored by ASK, the Support Connection and the Yorktown Leo’s Club.

Amy Dobson worked on various initiatives at the John C. Hart Memorial Library to benefit renovation of the Children’s Room. Her project involved creating and maintaining a new database for the Friends of the Library to modernize communication with members and add email as an option for community outreach. She recruited and coordinated a team of high school volunteers to set up and organize their first penny social. Amy also designed and conducted a Creative Writing Workshop for middle school students. The workshop addressed the issue of writer's block in young writers and showed how to find inspiration for their writing. Amy hopes to encourage participation in library programs and literary arts.

Jessica Hanratty’s project was designed to educate a young audience on the changing state of families in our society and provide them with tools to discuss their varied family circumstances with pride, confidence and respect. It is essential for children to feel like their families are normal even if they are not traditional by definition. It’s also important for children to be able to understand diversity and be respectful of families unlike their own. Jessica’s project included speaking at adoptive family associations, providing insight from personal experience. The materials Jessica prepared can be used for informal workshops in extracurricular groups and support organizations as well as in classrooms.

The four girls will graduate from Yorktown High School in June.